Biography
John W. Powell was the editor and publisher of the China Monthly Review, a Shanghai magazine his family had run for decades, indicted in San Francisco in April 1956 on thirteen counts of sedition under a 1917 wartime statute. The charges rested on the Review's reporting that the Korean War was a tragic error and its accounts of U.S. bacteriological warfare; he called it a freedom-of-the-press case.
The defense committee’s statement in the National Guardian of May 15, 1961 reports that the Justice Department dropped its sedition prosecution of John W. Powell, Sylvia Powell and Julian Schuman on May 2, 1961. It credits Doris Brin Walker with defense preparation and research, A. L. Wirin with pretrial and constitutional arguments, Charles Garry as chief trial counsel, and lawyers Benjamin Dreyfus and Laurent Frantz with additional work on the case. This documents the prosecution and counsel roles, without establishing confinement. National Guardian, May 15, 1961, printed page 8.
The September 22, 1958 National Guardian reports an earlier narrowing of the sedition prosecution: after the government announced that it would not present evidence on some allegations, Federal Judge Louis E. Goodman dismissed Count 9 of the indictment. The report identifies A. L. Wirin as defense counsel who had traveled to China seeking witnesses and says the trial, previously set for September 22, had been rescheduled for October 13. This was an interim dismissal of one count, distinct from the final May 2, 1961 termination already described above. The report does not establish incarceration or a completed October trial. U.S. acts to bar evidence in Powell-Schuman case, printed page 3.
